Person I Watched Grow Up Review - Slade Barrett

Well folks, it has been 18 years. Eighteen years of mullets, beer fetching, best efforts yielding mild results, always willing to help, dead baby jokes, and becoming his own man later, Slader has become the man. This past Monday, Slade "He'll Do It If He Gets Paid" Barrett graduated from y alma mater, Cinnaminson Hight school, 14 years after I had. That means Slade was born around the time I was 16. That put me in about sophomore/junior year of high school, but one of his brothers would have to determine that. As with any of my friends, I was with them in high school, still with them when college started, then lost them for several years, but ultimately came back to them about 4 years ago. The Barrett family was there, and Slade was all about getting his Duba back.

My earliest memories of Slade involved one of the several nights Brandon had his friends over for some bears. I never drank in high school, so I stayed and left when I wanted, but all others had to stay or find a way home. Slade, probably between 2 and 3 years old, would fetch his brother and his associates bears, chips, ANYTHING. He would fetch me Yoo-Hoos. 

It was maybe junior or senior year, one day, Slade was saying cute kid things and hanging with the 'big boys' - us who thought we ruled the world. One night in particular, Slade was fetching everything then hanging out in the kitchen. Several people are smoking cigarettes and drinking beers, and Slade asks us to guess what he is doing. You know, like charades. So Slade squats down and fold his arms in front of him. He slowly pulled his right arm away from his body then slammed it back to his chest. He did the same with the left arm, and eventually one after another then both at the same time. Everybody was guessing something....something wrong that is. Finally, I sit down next to him and tell him I know what he is - a cabinet. Stunned, and looking to have a leg up on me, Slade asks (in a 4 year old smart-ass way), "Oh yeah? Which one?" I quickly point out the correct cabinet (only one with double doors). My friends were amazed. And Slade was dazzled.

The next round I stumped him good. I cannot remember what I was doing, but he would not get it nor probably could not get it. So he goes again after giving up. He squats down again, raises his hands above his head, arms straight. He then proceeds to slowly rise up and arch over to the side. He held that position creepily staring at us 10 seconds at a time. I knew immediately what it was. I kept saying "Doesn't anybody else even try at this game?" They were all wrong. I could not take it anymore. I proceed to tell Slade that he is a specific bottle of Mountain Dew fictionally being poured into a cup that had no Mountain Dew inside. Slade, as always was stunned.

I remember laughing at the things toddler Slade - Sladler - would say, only for his dad to yell at me to stop making fun of his kid. I knew he was joking, but Brandon's dad always had that way of planting that little seed of doubt in your head. I am sorry Mr. B, but when I ask your son where he gets his blonde hair from and you all already trained him to say "the mailman", well, I am going to laugh!

The next stage of Slades's evolution involved the cartoon and video game years. We were in our late teens and very early twenties during this phase. This means we were all drinking. A lot. Brandon's dad was resting after several surgeries in the bottom floor of the house and we sometimes slept around where he was on the floor. Sometime I had the little couch, and our giant friend Bach would take the appropriately giant couch. It never mattered what time we got it in, what time we actually stopped drinking for the night, at the taint of dawn there would be a little runt of a mulleted kid standing there.

"Dubie...I need you to play a video game with me..." He was relentless if you said no. So, I almost always woke up to hang with him. I think the best game at the time was Super Smash Brothers. I used to go from beating him to within an inch of losing and then letting him somehow beat me in the end. He refused to lose - so you had to let him beat you. It almost felt like a house rule. But that is also why not many others played games with him, hungover, at 630 in the morning.

One of these mornings, Brandon sneak attacked Slade. They were calling different Pokemon characters to fight each other. Most of these battles ended up with Slade on the ground cry-laughing and us all laughing with him. One day, I felt sorry for little Slade. I whispered in his ear, "Call Duba-chu." Slade recovers himself, looks at me real quick, then looks at Brandon, "I call..................Duba-chu!" Brandon quickly and softly speaks the question, "Duba-chu?" I proceed to box him in the ears, grab them, and push Brandon backwards down the stairs. Over a decade later, Slade still calls me Dubachu.

I disappeared from all the people in my life for almost a decade, and when I returned, Slade was a nubile teenager. Hair started forming on his arms and legs and his voice was all crackling like that kid from the Simpsons. He came over to help me out with my house whilst working on upgrades in order to sell it. After helping me spackle some walls, Slade proceeded to tell me dead baby joke after dead baby joke. It did not make the spackling go any faster, but it was relief of a rather tenuous situation I had. Throughout that summer I also helped Brandon do a lot of work to get stuff finished for his parents house. We enlisted Slade several times to fetch tools or do small tasks. He started by sucking at his work, but by the end of the day and end of the summer he was awesome.

Later that year Slade started having his friends hang out in the screen room, just like our crew used to do. He had a friend named goat and some other guys and some girls. The best part of the Barrett family,  if you are friends with one of their kids, you are family. The big change though was that Slade was his own man, with his own jokes and own sense of humor. Very warped, but hilarious nonetheless.

Slade, on Monday June 18, 2012, graduated from Cinnaminson High School. I saw the cake his parents had for his graduation party that had a picture of Slade's senior picture in one corner and a picture of the 4 year old mulleted slade in the opposite corner. I got a little reflective. I went from taking detailed notes in my head for my first ever Graduation Party Review to a retrospective on the guy that I am sure all my friends could "Everybody's Little Brother" - Slade Barrett. Certainly the best looking of the three brothers, but the least athletic, perhaps the most creative, but has trouble telling a story without having his balls broken, destined for greatness, but probably really and truly cannot grasp that just yet - I wish you all the best man. As I told you at the party - Have a neat summer. Your life has just begun, you have done well now and will in the future.  Blah blah blah.

Slade is at the end of this video, rallying all kids in the gymnasium in this one shot take musical tour of my and now his old school. He is the white kid.